UAE, Bahrain top in 'payroll to people' rate

Washington, August 14, 2014

UAE and Bahrain are among the top ranked countries with the highest payroll to population (P2P) rate, with 59 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively, as many people work directly for the government or government-owned entities, said a report.

Gallup’s latest global P2P measurements showed that countries with high rates tend to be some of the wealthiest or those with the highest GDP per capita, while lowest P2P scores tend to have large informal economies with high self-employment, which at the global level has a negative relationship with GDP per capita.

The data is based on more than 136,000 interviews across 136 countries last year, in which adults were asked a battery of employment questions modelled on the International Labour Organization’s standards.

It, however, does not count adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payroll-employed n the P2P metric and is not seasonally adjusted.

It found that about one in four adults worldwide or roughly 1.3 billion people worked full time for an employer last year and reported that the percentage of the total adult population that works at least 30 hours per week for an employer has not grown since 2012.

Regionally, Northern America and countries in the former Soviet Union, with 43 and 42 per cent respectively, had the highest P2P rates last year.

On the other hand, along with sub-Saharan Africa, the Mena region continues to perform poorly with respect to P2P , with the 19 per cent P2P rate at least partly attributable to the 52 per cent of the population not participating in the workforce.

In the Mena region, a combination of low workforce participation and high unemployment continues to drive the low P2P rate.

While some small Middle East countries such as Bahrain or the UAE have P2P rates higher than 50 per cent, the much larger countries including Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen have lower P2P, bringing the region's total score down, said the report.

Low workforce participation among women is a large factor in the region, with about three-quarters or more of women in Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen out of the workforce, it said.

As many as 200 million people were unemployed last year, which grossly misrepresents the global jobs situation, said the report.

The traditional way unemployment is calculated does not take into account people who are out of the workforce or self-employed out of necessity, and/or those who may work within the informal economy.

This is why developing countries such as Pakistan, China, and Thailand report such low unemployment rates of six per cent, 4.1 per cent, and 1.2 per cent, respectively, while developed countries such as the US and France, which respectively report slightly higher unemployment rates of 6.2 per cent and 10.1 per cent.

The Gallup World Poll has found repeatedly that what the whole world has in common is that ‘everyone wants a good job.’

About one in four worldwide fit into this category last year. In which case, better metrics are required on the global jobs situation - metrics that allow for direct country comparisons and correlate to GDP per capital, it added. - TradeArabia News Service